Permaculture design course

This June I did my two week Permaculture Design Course at Ragmans Lane Farm in Gloucestershire, held by Patrick Whitefield. It was a fantastic course helped along by some of the best weather in years.

Patrick takes most of the lessons however there are a few guest speakers from different fields, his wife Kathy also does a few of the lessons and is always present throughout patricks talks, which made for a very friendly atmosphere. I do admit to feeling slightly nervous before the course started as I was concerned that it would be full of hippies hugging trees, but it turned out that that there was people from all different backgrounds, so I felt more at home, me being northern council scum.

Here is Patrick and Sarah Pugh taking an outdoor lesson on a beautiful June day, all teaching should be like this.

I did feel that there could have been more practical sessions but the amount of material we went through I can see how that takes up time, however there was enough to keep me busy. I still wanted to get my hands dirty so a couple of months later I went back to volunteer for two weeks which again was a great experience. I felt that I was putting the theory into practice.

For anybody who is considering doing the design course or is just curious about permaculture I highly recommend this course.